Why should any police officer put their life, family, and future on the line to protect a community if that same community refuses to protect them from politically-motivated prosecutions brought by a corrupt and racist prosecutor pandering to a specific minority?

There is no doubt that 20-year-old Daunte Wright brought about his own death when he attempted to resist arrest and flee the scene in a motor vehicle which could be construed as a “deadly weapon” that posed a danger to others.

Likewise, from reviewing Body-Cam footage, I believe that former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter made a mistake, albeit a deadly one, when she apparently mistook her gun for a taser. Potter, who is white, shot and killed Wright, who is black, while attempting to take him into custody over a separate, active arrest warrant discovered during the stop.

If anything, Potter should have been censured and removed from the force with any financial responsibility for the mishap accruing to the Police Department.

That Potter was sentenced to two years in prison following a jury's conviction for first- and second-degree manslaughter is a travesty of justice. Even with the Judge’s leniency that provided that Potter "shall serve two-thirds of that time or 16 months in prison and a third of supervised release," the sentence is an affront to all police officers as it should be to all law-abiding members of the community.

The case should have never been brought. And the fact that vocal community activists – as well as the racist Minnesota Attorney General Keith (Keith X) Ellison – threatened the city with the specter of racial violence is deplorable and irrelevant.

Bottom line…

This appears to be an accidental discharge of a weapon without malice or motive. That it involved a white police officer and a black individual during racially troubled times involving another white police officer, Derek Chauvin, and black suspect, George Floyd, should have been enough to suspect the prosecution to be motivated by political concerns rather than justice.

Daunte Wright was no innocent bystander as he had previously been charged with first-degree aggravated robbery. The active arrest warrant at the time of his death was for failing to appear in court for previously fleeing from police and possession of a handgun without a permit.

I am not saying Wright deserved to die, but he brought about his own death.

We are so screwed when we allow our politicians to politicize criminal cases. We need to stand with our police and victims over criminals.

-- steve